Discussions of Islam in Turkey are still heavily dominated by political considerations and the dualistic paradigms of modern v. traditional, secular v. religious. Yet there exists a body of Muslim institutions in the country - Turkish theology faculties - whose work overcomes ideological divisions. By engaging with Turkish theology in its theological rather than political concerns, this book sheds light on complex Muslim voices in the context of a largely Western and Christian modernity.Featuring the work of Recep AlpyaAYA l and Azaban Ali Dzgn, this innovative study provides a concise survey of Turkish Muslim positions on religious pluralism and atheism as well as detailed treatments of both critical and appreciative Turkish Muslim perspectives on Western Christianity. The result is a critical reframing of the category of modernity through the responses of Turkish theologians to the Western intellectual tradition.

Pioneering collection of essays contributing to the history of philosophy and also to the contemporary debate about what philosophy is.

The Dialectical Forge identifies dialectical disputation (jadal) as a primary formative dynamic in the evolution of pre-modern Islamic legal systems, promoting dialectic from relative obscurity to a more appropriate position at the forefront of Islamic legal studies. The author introduces and develops a dialectics-based analytical method for the study of pre-modern Islamic legal argumentation, examines parallels and divergences between Aristotelian dialectic and early juridical jadal-theory, and proposes a multi-component paradigm—the Dialectical Forge Model—to account for the power of jadal in shaping Islamic law and legal theory.In addition to overviews of current evolutionary narratives for Islamic legal theory and dialectic, and expositions on key texts, this work shines an analytical light upon the considerably sophisticated “proto-system” of juridical dialectical teaching and practice evident in Islam’s second century, several generations before the first “full-system” treatises of legal and dialectical theory were composed. This proto-system is revealed from analyses of dialectical sequences in the 2nd/8th century Kitāb Ikhtilāf al-ʿIrāqiyyīn / ʿIrāqiyyayn (the “subject-text”) through a lens molded from 5th/11th century jadal-theory treatises (the “lens-texts”). Specific features thus uncovered inform the elaboration of a Dialectical Forge Model, whose more general components and functions are explored in closing chapters.

This book reconstructs the tradition of dialectic from Aristotle's "Topics," its founding text, up to its "renaissance" in 16th century Italy, and focuses on the role of dialectic in the production of knowledge. Aristotle defines dialectic as a structured exchange of questions and answers and thus links it to dialogue and disputation, while Cicero develops a mildly skeptical version of dialectic, identifies it with reasoning "in utramque partem" and connects it closely to rhetoric. These two interpretations constitute the backbone of the living tradition of dialectic and are variously developed in the Renaissance against the Medieval background. The book scrutinizes three separate contexts in which these developments occur: Rudolph Agricola's attempt to develop a new dialectic in close connection with rhetoric, Agostino Nifo's thoroughly Aristotelian approach and its use of the newly translated commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Averroes, and Carlo Sigonio's literary theory of the dialogue form, which is centered around Aristotle's "Topics." Today, Aristotelian dialectic enjoys a new life within argumentation theory: the final chapter of the book briefly revisits these contemporary developments and draws some general epistemological conclusions linking the tradition of dialectic to a fallibilist view of knowledge.

This book provides a systematic account of Aristotle's theory of dialectic.

Dialectical Democracy through Christian Thought offers an accessible yet theologically groundbreaking intervention into the battle over the role of government in the market. This book shows that the fight over policy involves a fundamental disagreement about who we are as human beings: independent individuals, or essentially social creatures.

How does the preacher know what God might say now based upon the many things God said then? Preachers and theologians throughout Christian history have grappled with Scripture's diverse emphases alongside the urgent task of declaring the authoritative Word of God in the contemporary pulpit. Aaron Edwards offers a new way of engaging with this problem, by exploring the theological relationship between biblical dialectics and heraldic proclamation. Edwards highlights the theological necessity of dialectical variety, without forfeiting assertiveness in the prophetic moment of preaching. A vast array of key voices from the theological tradition are drawn upon - including Augustine, Aquinas, Eckhart, Luther, Calvin, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Chesterton, Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, Ebeling, and others - to navigate the connection between Scriptural unity, clarity, and paradoxical plurivocality, leading to a nuanced account of dialectic. Applying this to the homiletically neglected concept of 'heraldic' confidence in preaching, Edwards examines the theological possibility of preaching in light of dialectical complexity via its 'prophetic' dimension. He shows how the uniquely revelatory relationship of Word and Spirit enables Scriptural illumination, prophetic discernment, and dialectical decisiveness in the 'momentary' encounter which undergirds all Christian proclamation.

This book brings together international scholars of Islamic philosophy, theology and politics to examine these current major questions: What is the place of pluralism in the Islamic founding texts? How have sacred and prophetic texts been interpreted throughout major Islamic intellectual history by the Sunnis and Shi‘a? How does contemporary Islamic thought treat religious and political diversity in modern nation states and in societies in transition? How is pluralism dealt with in modern major and minor Islamic contexts? How does modern political Islam deal with pluralism in the public sphere? And what are the major internal and external challenges to pluralism in Islamic contexts? These questions that have become of paramount relevance in religious studies especially during the last three-four decades are answered as critically highlighted in Islamic founding sources, the formative classical sources and how it has been lived and practiced in past and present Islamic majority societies and communities around the world. Case studies cover Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, and Thailand, besides various internal references to other contexts.

This book is about the Wildean aesthetic in contemporary Irish drama. Through elucidating a discernible Wildean strand in the plays of Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Thomas Kilroy, Marina Carr and Frank McGuinness, it demonstrates that Oscar Wilde's importance to Ireland's theatrical canon is equal to that of W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge and Samuel Beckett. The study examines key areas of the Wildean aesthetic: his aestheticizing of experience via language and self-conscious performance; the notion of the dandy in Wildean texts and how such a figure is engaged with in today's dramas; and how his contribution to the concept of a ‘verbal theatre’ has influenced his dramatic successors. It is of particular pertinence to academics and postgraduate students in the fields of Irish drama and Irish literature, and for those interested in the work of Oscar Wilde, Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Thomas Kilroy, Marina Carr and Frank McGuinness. okokpoj

Argumentation is often understood as a coherent set of Western theories, birthed in Athens and developing throughout the Roman period, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment and Renaissance, and into the present century. Ideas have been nuanced, developed, and revised, but still the outline of argumentation theory has been recognizable for centuries, or so it has seemed to Western scholars. The 2019 Alta Conference on Argumentation (co-sponsored by the National Communication Association and the American Forensic Association) aimed to question the generality of these intellectual traditions. This resulting collection of essays deals with the possibility of having local theories of argument – local to a particular time, a particular kind of issue, a particular place, or a particular culture. Many of the papers argue for reconsidering basic ideas about arguing to represent the uniqueness of some moment or location of discourse. Other scholars are more comfortable with the Western traditions, and find them congenial to the analysis of arguments that originate in discernibly distinct circumstances. The papers represent different methodologies, cover the experiences of different nations at different times, examine varying sorts of argumentative events (speeches, court decisions, food choices, and sound), explore particular personal identities and the issues highlighted by them, and have different overall orientations to doing argumentation scholarship. Considered together, the essays do not generate one simple conclusion, but they stimulate reflection about the particularity or generality of the experience of arguing, and therefore the scope of our theories.